Typoccupation by Ethiopia

Hebrew under the occupation of Ethiopia

This is an experimental typographic project that puts the Hebrew language under the foreign cultural influence of Amharic, Arabic and Korean languages. This was designed for a final project whereby I completed my degree (B.Des) in Visual Communication and Graphic Design at the Holon Institute of Technology (HIT).

Advisor: Oded Ezer

What would Hebrew look like if Ethiopia conquered and occupied Israel?

Israel’s Flag under the occupation of Ethiopia

Ethiopian Empire

Throughout the ages, different lands have been conquered by various empires. Often the occupying force abolishes the native language and cultural of the people and imposes their own identity on the conquered people. In other circumstances, the heavy influence of the occupying force filters throughout the social, political and cultural elements of the native society. For example, in the 7th century BCE, the Assyrians conquered the Land of Israel and the original old Hebrew script, known as the paleo-Hebrew script, was changed to the Assyrian Aramaic script. Both scripts come from the same group of Semitic languages so the difference in their appearance is not that big. Hebrew was still allowed to be spoken and written but only using the Assyrian Aramaic script.
In 1928, Turkey officially changed their Ottoman Turkish script which was based on Arabic and Persian scripts to the Latin-based new Turkish script as part of the modernization and secularization of the Turkish government

The symbols of Amharic the letters are constantly changing – the consonant and vowel can be found on each letter together. Each basic consonant has 7-12 variations depending on the added vowel.

In my project, I have chosen to examine the possibilities of what Modern Hebrew would look like today under the foreign cultural influences of Ethiopia, North Korea, and the Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS).
The Ethiopian occupation brings the Amharic script to Israel. The symbols of their letters are constantly changing – the consonant and vowel can be found on each letter together. Each basic consonant has 7-12 variations depending on the added vowel. In addition, Amharic is written from left to right, the opposite to Hebrew.

The following changes are reflected above: the direction of the letters has been reversed and the pen angle changed from 45 degrees in classic Hebrew to 0-5 degrees as in traditional Amharic manuscripts.

In addition, the vowels have been added to each consonant. Seen Above is the constanent Bet with 10 variation for each vowel in Hebrew.

Several examples of ethiopian–hebrew: reverse discrimination (top), violent confrontations (Middle), representatives of the community (Bottom).